Category talk:Hebrew impersonal adjectives

Deletion debate

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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Unused. What should be here, if anything? Mglovesfun (talk) 11:40, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Keep. See old discussion at User talk:Msh210#Kham, efshar, kal, etc.. The reason it doesn't have any entries is that I still haven't written the usage note, after more than a year … I suppose I should get on that. —Ruakh_TALK 12:53, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

I can withdraw on good faith. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:58, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

The following discussion has been moved from the page user talk:msh210.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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Kham, efshar, kal, etc.

Hi msh210,

I've been thinking we should have a category for adjectives like (deprecated template usage) חם (kham), (deprecated template usage) אפשר (efshár) (sp?), (deprecated template usage) קל (kal), etc. that frequently lead off sentences. ("Kham bakhútz." "Efshár mei-ha'ugá?" "Kal l'havín otó.") Does that seem like a good idea to you? If so, what do you think of the name Category:Hebrew impersonal adjectives?

Thanks in advance,
—Ruakh_TALK 21:15, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I assume you mean "that frequently start sentences" as a handy description, not as the criterion for inclusion in the category. (Can any adjective start a sentence, somehow? I suspect so.) What is the criterion, then? Cham (and kar) seems different to me from kal and efshar (and naim (google:נעים-לפגוש) and kashe), in that the latter are followed by l'- verbs and the former not. But maybe that's incorrect. (I've never heard efshar mehauga, but assume it's an elision of leechol, yes?) Why do you want to call them "impersonal": is that what they're usually called?—msh210℠ 21:26, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Re: handy description vs. criterion: Er, I kind of did mean it as the criterion. :-/   It's true that any adjective can start a sentence, though with most I can only think of sentences that would sound either poetic ("Khakhamim hem she-yod'im l'sameakh et nashoteihem") or ridiculous ("U-m'fugarim hem she-lo"). These adjectives are notable in that it's normal for them to start a present-tense clause, and in other clauses for them to be preceded only by a form of hayá. (Not counting adverbs and such.) Though, they can be preceded by l'- phrases — basically subjects in the dative case, if Hebrew had cases — as in "Lama l'Yosi mutar v'lo li?" I'll grant that I haven't given a very formal criterion, but to me these words seem to form a natural class; do they not to you? (N.B. most of them also have non-sentence-starting uses — "Ein mayim khamim" — just as in English many adjectives are also nouns, etc. But, not all: I can't think of any sentence using "efshar" as a normal adjective; in all cases I'd prefer "efshari" for that.)

Re: infinitivity vs. not: Maybe. google:"חם לגעת" does get some hits, though admittedly it's not the most natural phrase in the world. BTW, I'd "translate" "Efshár mei-ha'ugá?" as either "Efshár l'kabél mei-ha'ugá?" or "Efshár lakákhat mei-ha'ugá?", depending on the situation, but I suppose "Efshár le'ekhól mei-ha'ugá?" is basically the same.

Re: "impersonal": *shrug* They're always masculine singular, and they seem analogous to the impersonal constructions in English ("it's hot outside", "it's easy to understand it/him"), though of course not every such Hebrew expression translates to such an English one and vice versa ("I'm hot" = "kham li", "Can I have some?" = "Efshar?"; conversely, "It's raining" = "yored geshem"). I don't know what the usual name for them is.

—Ruakh_TALK 23:48, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Re "I haven't given a very formal criterion, but to me these words seem to form a natural class; do they not to you": Well, yes and no, for two reasons. (Well, yes, for the reasons you state, and no, for two reasons.) (1) The "infinitivity" (?) business. It seems like two classes, not one. Note, though, that you can say זה-לא-אפשר also (although I think "bilti efshari" is more common now). So maybe it's just one class. (2) It seems (contradicting what you said above) that every one of these adjectives can also be used in the normal adjective fashion (can you find one that's not?), which kinda dilutes the strength of the category. Perhaps call it "Hebrew adjectives that can be impersonal" or something.—msh210℠ 17:38, 9 December 2008 (UTC) Small edit in light of Google's no longer supporting that syntax.​—msh210℠ 14:43, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I'd be down with two categories, if you can clarify them well enough that I can apply them accurately. Re: "'infinitivity' (?)": It's not a real word, if that's what you're �ing. Re: normal adjective use: Yeah, maybe. I mean, they are adjectives, and I'm not suggesting otherwise. Re: "Hebrew adjectives that can be impersonal": That seems a bit wordy, and it also risks bringing in non-grammatical senses of "impersonal" (mechanical/robotic; distant/standoffish); are you saying that "Hebrew impersonal adjectives" would be misleading? —Ruakh_TALK 20:29, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Somewhat misleading, yes. No?—msh210℠ 21:01, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Or maybe not; we seem to have several such categories with such names; e.g., English uncountable nouns and English abstract nouns (which latter include fireside).—msh210℠ 21:16, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Did we reach a conclusion here? I can't tell. —Ruakh_TALK 19:07, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

There were a few issues we discussed:

1. What words get included? Criteria? — This seems to be the (somewhat subjective, but that's okay) criterion that it's usual for such words to start sentences (preceded by "to be" in past and future).
2. Are there two categories: things followed by "to" verbs and things not? — You think not, and, even if yes, we can always fine-tune later.
3. What to call the category. — I have no objection to you original suggestion, Hebrew impersonal adjectives, if that's what they're called in English and they have no English name in Hebrew. (By that latter I mean, of course, that Anglophone grammarians/linguists have no name for this type of Hebrew adjective.)

So we seem to be good to go. I assume, incidentally, that yesh and en will be in this category (even though they aren't preceded by "to be" in past and future but are instead replaced by it)?—msh210℠ 19:19, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

So, we did decide to create at least one category?

1. Sounds good.
2. O.K.
3. I don't know if there's an English name for them, period, applied to either language. google:"impersonal adjective|adjectives" gets only 68 hits (257 raw), and most of them aren't in this sense (though some are). I'm suggesting this name because I don't have a better one; because these are adjectives; and because impersonal verb, impersonal expression, and impersonal construction are standard terms. (In a lot of languages, including at least English and French, you can't use an adjective like this on its own — you have to say something like "it is good/understood/obvious that […] " or "it is cold/hot/rainy in […] " or "it is easy/difficult/interesting to […] " — so it makes sense to view the construction or expression as a whole as impersonal. In Hebrew, you just say "tov/kamuvan/barur she […] " or "kar/kham/[n/a] b'- […] " or "kal/kashe/m'anyen l'- […] ", so it seems like the adjective itself is being used impersonally. And we're a dictionary, so it's more convenient for us to describe these as properties of individual words. (If this were standard category with a standard name — which it may well be, but if so I don't know it — then I don't think it would have occurred to me to ask anyone about it, I would have just created the category. I'd like your opinion because I'm not sure about this, it's just an idea I had. And I think it's a good idea, but maybe not, and anyway not all good ideas work out in practice.)

And I wasn't thinking that yesh and ein would be included, since they don't seem to be adjectives at all, but more like quasi-verbs. For example, they (especially ein) can function as copulas in formal Hebrew (as in שבכל הלילות אין אנו מטבילין אפילו פעם אחת or אם תרצו, אין זו אגדה). Funnily enough, my Hebrew–English dictionaries all give yesh as an adverb, which I think they're using a catch-all POS, and my Hebrew dictionary seems to give it only as a noun, apparently on etymological grounds. (Speaking only of the grammatical/existential use here. Certainly it has lexical uses as a noun, as all dictionaries agree.)

—Ruakh_TALK 16:14, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Hm. I maintain that yesh and en are used the way adjectives are, and seem to be adjectives. But having thought about it some more, I suppose they're not adjectives of the sort we're discussing here. After all, yesh li sefer is like kasha li handasa=handasa kasha li: still an adjective, just not of the sort we're discussing. Or so it seems to me at the moment.

More importantly: I suggest that the fact that these adjectives are "impersonal" is perfect material for a usage note; perhaps draft a usage-note template that can be included in all these pages and that categorizes.—msh210℠ 19:59, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for all your advice. I've gone ahead and created Category:Hebrew impersonal adjectives. I haven't written the usage-note template yet — I've thought a bit about what it should say, but it's still kind of vague in my head — so right now the category is still empty. I know how you like to keep your talk-page clean, but I'd kind of like to keep this conversation around. Is it all right if I copy it to the category's talk-page? Thanks again. —Ruakh_TALK 00:46, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

If you like, you certainly can, but it's unnecessary: I'll keep it as long as you like, and archive it thereafter. Nice explanation in the cat.—msh210℠ 15:48, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

If I may intervene, and I apologize for not reading the entire discussion, I might be able to contribute on certain points that I did read:

• The words yesh and eyn have been baffling Hebrew grammarians for a long time. In Hebrew they function like verbs with null subject. The ultra-conservative grammarians claim the thing stated as existent or non-existent is the sentence's subject (and there is the famous pseudo-philosophic mnemonic: ma she-yésh u-ma she-éyn hu ha-nosé). However, this theory doesn't hold much water for Modern Israeli Hebrew (I don't have enough information regarding Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew). First, since the unmarked word order in MIH is S-V-O, it is quite remarkable that yesh/eyn sentences are unmarkedly built as V-S and never have direct objects, according to the ultra-conservative theory. It would be more reasonable to assume that yesh marák ("there is soup") is analogous with holkhim habayta ("It's time to go home", lit. "going home"). Furthermore, native MIH-speakers insist (intuitively) on inserting the clitic et before the alleged subject in yesh/eyn sentence, when it is definite, e.g. kvar yésh li et ha-séfer hazé or kvar yésh li ta-sèfer-azé. Since in MIH et always introduces direct object (unlike Biblical Hebrew where et functions in a more complicated way), this implies that the thing stated as existent/non-existent is actually the object of the sentence. Of course teachers at school frown upon saying yesh li et ha-sefer and insist it should be yesh li ha-sefer, but even careful radio/TV announcers introduce et in this position when interviewing rather than reading from the teleprompter.
• Stepping up to a higher register of Modern Israeli Hebrew, yesh and eyn have nominal inflection (namely, yeshní, yeshkhá and the somewhat peculiar yeshnó; eyní/eynéni, eynkhá, eynó/eynéno). So we see here something that behave nominally but normally occupies the verb slut of the sentence.
• efshár has a nominal form (in Hebrew nouns and adjective are extremely similar morphologically, so nominal here refers to adjectives too). It seems to behave somewhat like a modal verb in English. It introduces a base-form verb, it has a special negation (namely, í-efshàr, just like you say "can't" and not "don't can"). You've noticed that efshár lagáat is grammatical while kham lagáat is not, because the adjective kham don't have the modality feature that efshár has.
• To sum it all up, the classification of these words to parts of speech is difficult, and even experienced grammarians differ on this issue. Perhaps a special category of "quasi-verbs" or "modals" or something similar would be a solution. Drork 17:56, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Thanks for that. We (enwikt) seem to use (for any language) "Particle" as a catch-all header when we can't assign a POS. Not ideal, but.​—msh210℠ 18:01, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

That seems to be a common practice. They did the same in the company I used to work for as linguist. Drork 04:47, 28 July 2010 (UTC)